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Does the order book show all the "dark pool" trades? It surely cannot show all those who sit and wait (or have bots) for the price to change so they can move their ask price up.

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The order book would show people who are sitting on either side of the market, so if they have a bot that's adjusting their quote it would still show it - unless I'm misunderstanding your question?

I think we're talking about parties who don't actually have an order in. Rather they have automated a process to enter orders in response to certain conditions. Depending on what those conditions are, you won't be able to rely on a continuous price trajectory.

Admittedly, I don't see how this is different for BTC than it would be for any other asset.

Those are not providing liquidity in a useful sense right now. Usually the measure is people prepared to trade at current bid or offer ie a very narrow measure. If you want to buy at 1% down that's not useful now.

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